🗣️This Is Important!

I'm so fortunate I was able to get my uterus removed, and it took so many years for any gynecologist to be willing to even have a serious conversation about it let alone refer me to a surgeon where I could discuss my options.

before I was allowed to pursue surgery, I had to prove that I had tried "less extreme" options, which in my case was an injection of a very strong hormonal birth control that led to me bleeding for three months straight (which I experienced as a constant waking nightmare of dysphoria) and, if I had remained on it for over a couple years (if it had "worked" for me as a solution) would have started to erode my bone density and was therefore not recommended for long-term use.

I know surgery is seen as the most 'extreme' option, but to be fucking honest, I don't understand why dissolving your bones is seen as the 'less extreme' option, when hysterectomies are extremely safe and routine procedures.

and previous to being able to meet with an actual surgeon, I had so many doctors tell me, "Oh, you wouldn't want a hysterectomy because then you'd go into early menopause and your bone density would begin to decrease earlier in your life" which is wild because

as I learned from an actual surgeon, you can just leave ovaries in & remove the rest, so you don't enter hormonal menopause. like it's that easy to avoid it. it's not an additional complication. a subtotal hysterectomy that leaves ovaries so as to not trigger early menopause is completely normal and common.

the "less extreme" option offered would have decreased my bone density more rapidly anyway

I'm so grateful and thankful to be on the other side of the surgery, but I still feel frustrated that there is so much fearmongering from gynecologists themselves about hysterectomies for patients who desperately need and want them. It's seen as a complete last resort, but I genuinely do not believe it should be seen that way in all cases.

If someone genuinely expresses continuous desire for a surgery, whether that be for alleviation of debilitating symptoms, or dysphoria, or both (which was my case), they should be allowed to at the very least talk with a surgeon about what that surgery actually entails and the potential risks and specifications involved. Nobody should just be immediately stopped from pursuing that information from the start with the presumptuous declaration of "Oh, you wouldn't want that."

i’ve noticed lately that i’m not really a person to other queer and trans people anymore. ever since i started openly identifying as a trans man, people have been much less likely to consider my experiences as serious or worth talking about, less likely to give me any sort of benefit of the doubt when discussing queer issues or gender, and much less likely to care if something they’ve said was hurtful to me. i've watched as people went from viewing me as a complex human being with deep thoughts and feelings and a complicated and traumatic past whose voice was worthy of hearing, to just Man.

and i really want to get across how serious this is, bc i know a lot of you will read this and just go “ugh another man complaining” and i would ask if you’d react this way to a trans person who wasn’t a man, but i know you wouldn’t. because i identified as trans nonbinary for years and wasn’t treated this way. people took my experiences with misogyny, fatphobia, transphobia, etc. seriously, didn't try to claim i hadn't experienced it or that it wasn't as bad as i was making it out to be. it was specifically when i started to use the label 'man', not when i went on testosterone or came out in my real life or had any sort of large meaningful change in my life or who i was. it was literally in response to the word i used to describe myself. that one word was all it took for the queer and trans community to decide i was no longer worthy of being treated like a person. and of course, this shift was happening when the rest of society was also deciding that because i was more visibly queer i wasn't deserving of humanity anymore to them either. it was an absolute mindfuck to be experiencing a significant increase in queerphobia and transphobia in my real life while simultaneously having the queer and trans communities deny that that was happening and start to dehumanize me.

and i really wish this was an online only thing, but it's not. there has not been a single trans event or rally or protest i've gone to in the last year where issues that primarily affect transmasculine people have been directly spoken about. it's rare to even hear the words 'trans men' at these events. at a rally i went to last week, one of the speakers said that "all the signs that say 'protect trans kids' should say 'protect trans girls'" meanwhile out of the approximately 10 trans trans people chosen to speak, only two of them were trans men. numerous mutual aid resources for queer people explicitly exclude trans men. when speaking to the parent of a trans boy the other day, they had absolutely no idea that trans men could be denied coverage for gynecological care if their gender marker is an "m", which their child's is. this erasure and dehumanization of trans men, even within the queer and trans community, doesn't just 'hurt men's feelings lmao', it puts us in danger.

so yeah. it's really bizarre to go from the world denying my trauma and experiences because i'm just a stupid deranged woman, to the queer and trans community denying my trauma and experiences because i'm just a whiny entitled man. because in neither situation am i treated like a human being in need of compassion. i'm just a blank slate for whatever gender stereotype people need to project onto me.

rules of engagement:

-do not tag this with "q slur" -do not insinuate that i'm making any sort of statement about trans women/femmes. i'm literally just talking about me and my experiences. we're not on a goddamn oppression seesaw. -ra/df/em lite rhetoric gets an immediate block. i'm tired of dealing with ur bootlicking asses.

cmesin

I recently colorized this c. 1910 photo of Magnus Hirschfeld's 4th, 6th, and 7th patients. They were three of the first trans men to receive medical care/legal support in Germany. I can't help but appreciate their dapper sense of fashion.

I think we desperately need more focus on exorsexism/nbphobia & analysis of nonbinary place in society that doesn't just generalize binary experiences. It's very very exhausting seeing nonbinary things barely every get discussed UNLESS they can be grouped under transfem/transmasc issues.

& this is kind of hypocritical of me to say because I know that "nonbinary" is such an expansive term on purpose! and I like that! maybe we need different terminology because like both as someone who is equally a man and a woman (androgyne) & as someone who is agender+neutrois there are experiences I have that are not addressed by such binary-focused thinking. Even when people are inclusive of nonbinary people... you still rarely see discussions ABOUT androgynes or neutral people that center us and explore the ways we are treated AS nonbinary people. Like the ways that misandrogyny has made me feel scared of being androgynous & the feeling that androgyny is inherently ugly. The internalized distress of wondering if it's even possible to be transneutral when woman/manhood is so defined by community and there just isn't any of that for us (literally smth that caused a huge depressive episode a few months ago). The lack of awareness about alternative HRT/SRS. The lack of androgynous and neutral and third-gendered language for us to describe ourselves & our relationships. The way that a LOT of binary trans people throughout the modern history of the trans community consider/ed nonbinary identity ad a stepping stone towards binary identity, something lesser that you only do when you can't commit (hello biphobia!), AND as something that somehow makes you safer, you don't suffer as much- as if it's safer being physically androgynous around transphobes when it's your desired presentation- you arent as REAL. Literally transmeds will argue that exorsexism doesn't exist because it's all "just transphobia" and "not unique" (god that sounds familiar). The forced binarization of all of us & also the forced degendering of androgynes who are never allowed to be considered "real" men and "real" women. The idea that two transneutral people who present the same SHOULD be forced into the transmasc/transfem binary based on their AGABs because "that's all cis people see so it's what matters the most," which only serves to disconnect us from each other & silence us calling out the exorsexism we experience from those communities.

This got longer than I meant but tl;dr we deserve better methinks

my least favorite thing abt the trans bathroom discourse is the other trans ppl going “lmao dumb transphobes don’t u know that if u pass these bills you’ll have trans MEN in the women’s bathroom????????” bc like. no. that’s actually not what will happen. what will happen is that we just won’t use the bathroom at all, bc do you know what happens when someone who looks like they could possibly be a man walks into a women’s bathroom when there are transphobes around? they get beaten half to death or get the cops called on them. so no, the result of these bathroom bans won’t be “trans men in women’s bathrooms lol” it will be trans men not going out in public as much or trans men suffering higher rates of utis and kidney problems. what happens is that transphobes get what they want: we disappear from public life.

Happy Spaghetti Day y'all

still believe that one of the greatest bits of all time was on January 6th, 2021 when. well. you know. and twitter was understandably an echo chamber of panic and fear and Justin McElroy just tweeted a selfie with a filter that was like “have a delicious national spaghetti day” followed by 3 tweets that were like “fuck. i’m sorry. i don’t know how to delete scheduled posts” and as i type this two years later i’m laughing

I am so sick of the way others talk about and treat trans men. All of the time, people talk about how much they hate men and then say things like “only cis men though” or “ but not YOU because, you know…” . They think they’re protecting our feelings, but really they’re erasing the identities of trans men. Don’t separate trans men further from cis men, i am so sick of the constant comparison. Don’t tell me you hate men, but love trans men. That just makes me think you don’t think trans men are men. I’m just so tired of how hard trans men have to fight to be considered men instead of this quirky way of liking men without being around cis men. Some people are just too ashamed to admit that they like men. It’s okay to like men and masculinity. Liking men is amazing and so many people do. There is nothing wrong with having men in your life, so stop using Trans men as scapegoats and stop erasing our identities, we deserve better! Trans men deserve better!

photo: tayray55

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